Overall I have a preference for being alone. Having other people around often bothers me, in particular if I have to share my time between paying attention to them and pursuing other (lonely) activities which I'd rather do instead.
However, I also can't feel happy without at least some human presence/interaction. I know if I stay alone with no contact at all for more than a few days, I'll feel lonely and start craving some human company. The way I balance these two impulses in practice, is to live with the same person who I get along with well, almost 24 hours a day, day after day, and have otherwise very few other contacts with other people. This is in no way perfect, but it's better than any alternative I can think of.
Overall, I tend to dislike interacting with/within groups of people more than with individuals. I particularly enjoy discussing interesting topics, so long as it's just with one person. I'm often disappointed in people, have fairly high standards, and only a few topics of interest which I like to share. This severely limits the amount of people, and circumstances in which I can pleasantly interact with them. I can still interact with just about anybody, I just don't enjoy the perpetual strain I experience when doing so.
What I want to get people to discuss here is obvious given the title. What has been their experience regarding who and specially how many people they live with, and how that impacted their motivation and happiness.
I don't want to peruse papers on happiness and productivity, because I'm particularly interested in anecdotal tales coming from a Lesswrong sample.
Three pieces of information seem relevant, so if that is okay with whoever comments, I'd ask people to tell us if they consider themselves introverts (recharge batteries by being alone) extroverts, or both. As well as their age and hometown.
The reason I want to have a fuller understanding of this is that I've slowly come to have a strong belief that the main problem with people I know who are suffering, or failing to achieve their goals, is living with fewer tribal affiliates than they "need". And that belief could very well be false or biased.
I'm equally interested in what people think in general about their friends' living situation: "Most of my friends who live with friends experience such and such emotion, but the ones who live with family experience such and such problems with motivation"
as I am in personal experiences.
Following a suggestion about creating topics like this before, I'll put my own case in the comments.